smilingmonkey

I think the skin is from a download pack that I found by UK_Widowmaker. http://combatace.com/files/file/9858-6-sqn-australian-flying-corps-se5a/ I really wanted the SE5a skin from 6 squadron for the nice red band and kangaroo, just as a player, not for any sense of historical accuracy, just because I wanted to honour the Aussie flyers in my own little way. Of course I know nothing at all about putting skins into the sim, so I put the unzipped file into the first folder of many for SE5a aircraft in the game, and with repeated messing about could not find the kangaroo one at all...Leading me to assume I had done it completely wrong. However, the sim continued to run, which was good, and I found what looked to be a boomerang on one of the skins, so I just went with that. They come back when you throw them you know, theoretically at least....Not the actual hunting boomerangs, they are just designed to smash your skull in, but I digress. Anyway, the point is, if it is indeed one of Widowmakers skins, thank you sir...I love it. The next thing I suppose is where can I find a simple step by step explanation of how to successfully get skins into the game? I need the help to be honest.

Some more screenies from the adventures of Sam Vimes...

Ooooohhh.... Thats mean Widowmaker... Ha. I would say who cares if it aint realistic, it isn't a documentary. I wonder if anyone here, who, as a kid dreamed about planes, didn't dream the same sort of fantastical, impossible stuff... It is Hollywood, suspend your disbelief and go with it for the ride...or don't watch it.

I would say that the marketing campaign has been a success. And now for the yarns?

Thanks Olham, that one is my pick of the bunch too. That is my same pilot, TaillyHo, he has had a few nasty scrapes in the month or so he has been serving, but he still lives....I have feared for his life on more than one occassion as he has been forced down a couple of times, and once only just made it back over the lines, but he is the only pilot I have on the go at the moment, so I am being quite careful with him. Still, you can only be careful up to a point, and after that your survival is all in the hands of the Gods. He met Rolands for the first time a few missions ago, that was almost the end of him, I managed to put the Nieup down at a nearby friendly airfield, but she was smoking terribly, I think one more hit and she would have been in flames...

Some screens of a small battle today over an enemy airfield...The weather was filthy and we were jumped by a flight of EIII's.... I pretty quickly latched onto this one, and ordered the rest of my flight to go after the others, we were victorious, three EIII's destroyed, no losses to our side. I think that I have my head around the posting of images now, so I will be able to put a few in my reports from the front, it's a bit of fun trying to frame that perfect screenshot in game, and one day I hope to achieve that... Loving the little Nieuport.

My good old pilot JR 'Bob' Dobbs met some Einies from a squadron I had no idea about flying for the Lafeyette Americaine yesterday... The designation was KEK Jammetz (?). Anyway, I had to look this up and finally found a wealth of history concerning the Empire, the four kingdoms and the formation of the Jastas... Great stuff OFF. I have recieved a very interesting history lesson and feel much more enlightened for it. I will say something for these KEK lads, they flew pretty bloody well and gave my flight a bit of a fright high up over the mountains before we chased them off. I havn't met them again since, and have flown a few missions in the same airspace, perhaps they have become a Jasta now, and I met them just before it all happened. This is definately not a game, it is a lesson.

I have to admit that my knowledge of the pilots and technology of this era is lacking, and with my work and home life, there was just no time to pursue the interest...Now, however my situation has changed, I have moved out of the city, into a small country town...The pace here is much slower and I now have the time to delve into the history a lot more, in between bouts of gardening. I think this situation is much better for my mind, body and soul. I have been studying Boelke recently...Spurred on by the fact that my pilot (JR) met him in flight a couple of nights ago and left him in flames...That was on May 20 1916. It was a huge, low level fight that my flight arrived to late, Einies everywhere over a friendly airfield...I ordered the lads to join in and dove down myself only to find myself on Boelkes tail...my first chance at an ace in the game. He ws attacking another kite from a friendly squadron and didnt see me I suppose, there were planes everywhere and just not colliding was an effort in itself, several good bursts at close range and the little Einie was wreathed in flames, I was close enough to hear the screams... Of course, I had to survive the fight and managed to help out my flight a few times, getting all the boys home... Then I just had to do some study on the man himself, I expect to meet him again at some point now...

Wow.....Just wow. The level of detail is amazing. A definate purchase for me. I thought my WW1 dreams had come true with BHaH plus HiTR....but these screenies are kind of telling me that my dreams still have some breathing room... That is a great gift. Much respect for your hard, and beautiful work gentlemen. (I just need to know...when, and how much.)

Hellshade Sir, that was brilliant... Just tonight I started flying again after a long break due to real life and work issues... A friend of mine from years ago contacted me several days ago and we talked about this sim, I pointed him in the direction of your youtube videos...Many years ago he and I used to play a tabletop WWI miniatures game, the name of which escapes me now, but we had metal figurines, turn based play, stands for altitude and plotted movement, tables for dice roll etc...it was very complicated but we loved it. My friend has always been an enormous WW1 aviation buff and when he saw your videos he was speechless... I believe he agreed with me that this sim is the very thing that we had dreamed about in the past.... He will no doubt become a convert, and at the right time to anticipate the next iteration of this great experience. This video, tonight, proves to me that you, sir, should definately be the first port of call for any prospective player....That was perhaps the perfect atmospheric advertisement for this sim. Well done.

Again, well worth the wait RAF_ One day I hope to have the time to do some reports at the very least. Just as soon as I learn to shoot.

I was hoping I had missed an episode of Paul's story whilst i have been away, not so it seems. I hope he is alright....

That looks pretty great.. I have a love affair with TES Oblivion on my ps3....It s my go to game when nothing much else interests me... I have no doubt that this Skyrim will just add to this love affair.

I started my love of WW1 sims back in the day when a friend left his computer and a copy of Red Baron 2 at my house...I wasted many, many hours flying around that little world. Then it all dried up for me, I lost interest in flight sims entirely for many years. Then just recently I got the bug again, the same friend introduced me to Il2 and I was happily flying Hurricanes around and shooting up the Japanese... But the love of WW1 flight was still strong...I googled and searched and found Rise of Flight...I did not jump straight in, but watched many you tube clips and read forums, not wanting to prematurely immerse myself. It was during one of these you tube journeys that I discovered a clip by Hellshade...I had no idea the Over Flanders Fields even existed before that, I watched in awe as the enemy planes dove down from the clouds and danced around each other in a balletic furball...That single moment had me hooked. I searched more and was directed to the site, which I read in its entirety, amazed at the amount of input and assistance that the community had obviously had, I then found the Comat Ace forums...Just the staggering amount of love everyone had for the sim, and the qulity of the characters that were posting each day was the final nail in my OFF coffin... I bought it, waited impatiently, read everything I could find and tried not to annoy Uncleal with too many noob questions (which is quite easy to do if you just read the forums extensively)...Then I followed all the intructions to the letter when the sim arrived, installed with no problems, played with slack jawed amazement and crashed my first pilot after just 24 minutes, and loved it. It has to be the single greatest discovery in my flight simming to date....just brilliant.

I have a copy of Il2 1946 (the single disc one bought recently) which would not play at all until I had installed Securom and run it through it.... I have had no issues with it at all and it worked perfectly first time, though I did read of others needing to run it a few times before it would update the game... My report on it is simply that it saved me a lot of frustration after installing Il2 1946 and having it refuse to load up,which had me pulling my hair out and saying some prayers I learned in shearing sheds when I was a kid.

I am running a nicely modded 4.09 ultra pack version of iL2...it's nice. I have a couple of Batle of Britain campaigns that are a bit of fun...flying Hurries. This "Cliffs of Dover/Storm of war" looks great, and is fully in the theatre That I love the most WW2 speaking.. I doubt it will get much of a play whilst the OFF is going though...still, I am gonna get it.

No... I couldn't play it on "pilot never dies", That element of risk is, for me at least, what brings with it a sense of tension.. I play on "dice roll on death", and have had two pilots captured over enemy lines, Three killed outright in dogfights, and only once have I seen the "you escaped from capture" message. Oh, I also had my very first ever pilot crash and die on take off...bit sad, but it did make me appreciate the delicacy of the machinery. So far I have not had a stay in hospital longer than 19 days, except for one pilot who was captured, he was in for about a month. Then transfered to a nice POW facility, for tea, biscuits and burn cream presumably. I was very lucky with my pilot who landed his burning craft..I had been involved in a huge fight on our side of the lines, and had been shot up pretty well. The engine was failing and I made a run for the ground trying to survive. I was at about 100' when a little fire started, I was able to put it down, pretty roughly I admit, before the whole thing was engulfed in flames...I ended mission pretty fast on that one. To my mind that replicated my pilot jumpng out of the plane and legging it as it rolled to a halt. I took your advice regarding the TAC with the compass in it...it works for me.

I was thinking about this today as I was playing... The conclusion I came to is that I would be quite happy to just get back to the airfield..any airfield...or even a nice clear patch of ground, if I met an ace. I only say that because I ran into a group of Dr 1's for the first time yesterday whilst playing my British campaign...I have yet to enlist a new pilot for the british. To my mind having an ace reappear later on would not be such a bad thing, my own wingman seemed to be going down in flames during a brew-up on our side of the lines, shot down by some French pilot whom I then de-winged in a fit of revenge....later,at the airfield he wandered back in and was ready to go... And I myself have managed to put a burning machine down and end flight with only massive injuries and a good long stay in hospital... Who knows what is possible in the sim...Hell,my German pilot was forced down with engine failure today, behind enemy lines only to escape capture and return to fight after a twenty day run through the war...( I breathed a sigh of relief that time,he is my favourite pilot thus far). Love this sim.

Just did it and it hasnt crashed OFF yet. I take that as a good sign. I have the GTX 460 card, it's pretty nice for a more budget card I think. I did have a moment of terror before I realised I had to reconfigure the graphics stuff from the workshop, and a few of the things I had disabled such as the target cone, chat etc had turned back on.. And the sliders had all been mysteriously reset to 2 across the board, which was a bit weird. Played a few QC's, still looks awesome. Thanks for the heads up Hellshade.

Well...the floods are receding now and the massive clean up is beginning... The place is a bloody mess. People are helping each other out though, lots of volunteer stuff going on... Interesting how a disaster brings people together.

Hi Everyone, I have spent the past week or so looking for a WW1 sim to get back into it after my last efforts on Red Baron 2. That seems like an age ago now and I was surprised at how few sims I could find. At first I was very tempted by Rise of Flight. It looked great. But then I stumbled onto OFF pretty much by accident. That alone was worth some extra points.(I run my life by accident at times.) I spent many hours reading this forum, and watching the various Youtube vids. Just brilliant. I am thrilled to say that I think I may have found the sim I want to experience. So..I sent away my order for BHaH yesterday, now I just have to wait I guess.I also went out and found a copy of CFS3. I hadnt even played any CFS before and found that I enjoyed it and had no problem learning to fly it with small success on the hardest difficulty settings. I have to say that WW1 is where my heart lies when it comes to flight sims though. I do recognise that there may be some issues with installation and running OFF on my machine with vista 64bit. But I have been compiling a bit of a cheat sheet from the help thread and the faq. I will ask you guys if it all goes pear shaped later on though if that is cool. I am located in Australia and I am sure that I noticed someone mention that the game is region locked to US or Europe. And that the campaign was not playable in Australia. Is this true? I would be devastated if it was, plus not being able to understand why. Either way. I am living in hope that some great sim action is in my future. I like the feel of this forum and am looking forward to more visits.

RAF_Louvert, The first discovery has been a really wonderful experience. At first I could not wait to play and jumped in...got killed and saw how unforgiving the sim is. And loved it. I then recruited another young flyer and started another compaign flying the EIII..crashed a time or two on take off and spent a few weeks in hospital..but now have flown 18 mission with this young fella. I realise there are better aircraft for the newbie to start off in, but I am not put off by the nature of the sim and will persevere. My flyer has been involved in three combats in his career, and was given a claim form once...that was exciting. Every mission now I do a lot of aerobatic practice before I land the aircraft, both to lose height and to get a feel for what the little Eindekker can do... I love the way that seeing enemy craft gives me a little flush of butterflies in the stomache...that is cool. Today I spent some time tweaking the graphics and playing with my trackir profile...Now I have her running smooth, sweet and clean. All I can say is that this is without a doubt the best flight sim I have ever played...

Olham...to say your screenshots look pretty good is an understatement by far sir... I have followed the various info threads and also the FAQ at OFF website...I am pretty sure I could run the sim at bigger settings than I am at the moment, but I was just so eager to jump in that I gave it a cursory twiddle and then recruited a pilot right away.. Straight into campaign, flying a Halb. He lasted exactly 24 minutes....and he was killed by on of his flight clipping his wing after being shot up at 7500" by a 2 seater...engine straining, bit of smoke and a run for the airfield...I managed to get to within rock throwing distance of the airfield before the accident. Poor buggers first mission was a scramble. As far as graphics go I am running a Nvidea GTX 460....It is very nice. The OBD guys deserve high praise from the little I have seen so far....I have read that the sim is a complete revamp of CFS3...now I believe it...There is no comparison. I am really feeling for elephant, my disc arrived today,a little over 1 month...I understand he has been waiting for two months already...All I can say is get your e-mails in to let them know...and have a bit of faith, mine arrived through the floods after all.

Just fired her up for the first time and had a fly. Really bloody nice, looks beautiful. Now I am going to follow all the great advice in the threads here to optimise everything and configure my joystick. I am utterly impressed by how beautiful the landscape and sky looks. You Devs really need a huge pat on the back. Thank you. Drinks all round....

Yep. Doing it all by the numbers. Just DLing Hat in the ring expansion now and thats it. Have it all running in Admin mode, xp etc, and language set to english US.